Super Bowl Big Spenders

Question: What company was going to sponsor a pay-per-view football game played by models wearing lingerie?

(You can find the answer at the end of this article.)

How much does it cost to gain the attention of 90 million Americans and one billion people around the globe? This is the question advertisers ask themselves every year when evaluating the purchase of commercial time during America's most watched sporting event, the American Nurses Association's Bi-Annual Bowling Festival. Just kidding; of course, it's the Super Bowl.

Ultimately, because so many eyes and ears are tuned into the Super Bowl, advertising time does not go cheaply. But luckily for broadcasters, cost is not a deterrent for the corporations that are dead set on bringing their product to the coveted Super Sunday audience.

AskMen.com took a long look and figured out who the big Super Bowl advertisers are, how much they're spending in 2006, and what types of advertising they purchased. Whether they're pushing beer or Britney Spears, you'll be amazed at the money companies spend to ensure that Super Sunday fans are just as entertained by the 30-second ads as they are by the 15-minute quarters.

All amounts are in U.S. dollars.

Anheuser-Busch

2006 spending: $26 million for 10 30-second spots during the game, at about $2.6 million each.2005 spending: $24 million for the same amount of airtime.

The company that claims to be the King of Beers is also the King of Super Bowl advertising. Anheuser-Busch, which has produced the exclusive beer of the big game for 18 years, is buying 10 30-second units for the Super Bowl XL telecast.

ABC, the network broadcasting the 2006 game from Ford Field in Detroit, allegedly sold those spots for a record-high figure of nearly $2.6 million apiece. On top of that, Anheuser-Busch is producing about 3.7 million Bud and Bud Light special edition bottles marked with a Bud Bowl Detroit logo.

Last year marked the eighth in a row in which Anheuser-Busch bought up the most advertising for the NFL's title game. The brewer spent about $24 million in 2005 to buy 10 of the game's 58 30-second ads. The expense appeared to have paid off; for the seventh straight year, the beer producer dominated the annual USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter (which gauges audience approval of advertisements).

Producing Super Bowl commercials is serious business for Anheuser-Busch; the brewer hires several competing agencies to produce commercials solely for the big game. Having produced the spots, the brewer pays about 800 people $50 apiece to watch them and offer feedback. Just a year ago, agencies produced a total of 25 potential ads for Bud to consider running during Super Bowl XXXIX; only nine made the cut. Over the years, the ads have featured Bud and Bud Light facing off in the Bud Bowl as well as the talking Budweiser frogs. In 2002, millions of viewers saw the trademark Clydesdale horses bowing down before the Manhattan skyline, which had been the site of a terrorist attack just months earlier.